


You Belong With Me

by translorastyrell (nerddowell)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Jealous Loras, M/M, both of them are oblivious idiots okay, oblivious Loras, oblivious Renly, teenagers playing too much call of duty, that one soulmates au where they can hear each other's singing in their heads, the non-rickroll equivalent of a musical war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-31 09:04:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15116183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerddowell/pseuds/translorastyrell
Summary: The first time he’d heard him, Loras was sat in the school hall sitting his Year Six SATs, and Renly was singing Pharrell Williams’ Happy. It was more than a little distracting, in all honesty, and Loras was busy trying to focus on the reading comprehension questions, so having Renly’s voice – as wonderful, husky and soft as it was – echoing around his head was making it very difficult to concentrate.





	You Belong With Me

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Taylor Swift song because I, like Renly, am a 13 year old girl in terms of music taste.

Soulmates weren’t really a thing Renly had considered before. He knew they existed, in fairytales and bad Nicholas Sparks novels and the like, but he’d never met anyone who’d actually ended up with their soulmate. Robert was the one to tell him about them, one night when Renly was five and Robert, tanked up on scotch, had decided to allow Renly to climb up onto his knee in the living room and listen to his older brother’s drunken ramblings. Renly learned all about the girl called Lyanna, the beautiful younger sister of Robert’s best friend Mr. Ned; Robert had told him about her eyes, grey-silver and shining, about her fondness for winter roses, and about the sound of her voice singing, lyrical and beautiful, in Robert’s head.

Renly had asked why Robert hadn’t married her already, since that was what soulmates in love did, and Robert had smiled bitterly and said he’d tell him when he was older. Renly had asked again, when he was eight, and Robert’s face had clouded over and told him that if he knew what was good for him, he’d never mention her name again. Renly knew Robert’s strength, the simmering volcano of his temper, and promised never to ask.

When he was ten, he asked Stannis if he’d ever met his soulmate. Stannis scoffed and said that he didn’t hold with all that nonsense, that soulmates didn’t exist and the idea was for lovesick fools like Robert, before telling Renly to go and play in the garden and stop bothering him. Renly had gone outside to sit on his swing and think – one of his favourite pastimes as a child – keeping his book of fairytales open in his lap and poring over the stories. So many of them featured a beautiful princess and her soulmate, a handsome prince, who would break the spell with a kiss, or else sweep her off her feet and spirit her away to a wonderful new life in a castle.

(Renly would love a castle. He’d always dreamed of one, the way he would paint all the walls inside yellow – his favourite colour – and keep tame deer in the gardens. He’d feed them by hand, and give them golden collars shaped like crowns, and he’d have a thousand people living there with him to keep him company.)

There was no mention of hearing your soulmate’s voice singing in your head in any of those tales, however. Renly had never heard any voice in his head either, so he supposed it must be something Robert had made up, like Stannis said. But then, the stories all said that finding your true soulmate was very rare, so maybe Stannis just hadn’t met his yet. Renly hoped he’d get to meet his. He could imagine them already. Straight, long blonde hair like a fall of corn silk and big blue eyes like sapphires, sweet-tempered and kind, like the princesses in his books.

Imagine his surprise when, a year later, when they moved from Storm’s End in the north of Wales to King’s Landing in Surrey, he met Loras Tyrell.

Loras was not blond and blue-eyed and sweet-tempered at all. In fact, he was small, with curly brown hair and amber-coloured eyes, and with a fierce scowl on his face when Renly introduced himself. He looked less like a fairytale prince and more like a particularly angry dandelion, slender and dressed in green as he was, and he didn’t like Renly at all.

Renly tried to coax him into friendship by engaging Loras in conversations about Harry Potter (Renly’s favourite book series), only to find that Loras loathed everything to do with the entire series and would rather gouge out his eyes than play at Quidditch. Next, Renly tried inviting Loras to play in the treehouse he’d found in the woods behind his house, only to have Loras shin up the tree and then close the trapdoor firmly and refuse Renly admittance. Last of all, he’d tried sharing his collection of dress-up things with Loras, which won him over for a while. (Renly had a great plastic suit of armour with a real wooden sword, and Loras had been very excited to dress up as a knight.)

Loras pretended to be a famous knight, and Renly immediately took on the role of the dragon, being slayed time and time again, collapsing to the grass as dramatically as he could. Loras smiled despite himself at Renly’s goofing off, and from then on, they were friends.

* * *

They were fourteen and eleven when Loras realised he could sometimes hear Renly’s voice in his head, even when his friend wasn’t immediately around. The first time he’d heard him, Loras was sat in the school hall sitting his Year Six SATs, and Renly was singing Pharrell Williams’  _Happy_. It was more than a little distracting, in all honesty, and Loras was busy trying to focus on the reading comprehension questions, so having Renly’s voice – as wonderful, husky and soft as it was – echoing around his head was making it very difficult to concentrate.

Loras remembered one of his mother’s favourite songs and started humming the Tremeloes’  _Silence is Golden_. The teacher invigilating glared at him, but  _Happy_  disappeared from Loras’ head within seconds, so he figured the message had been received loud and clear. He managed to sit the rest of his exam in relative peace and quiet, but the moment he was out of the exam hall – and honestly, it was as though Renly had some kind of homing device on him to know that – he was assaulted with an internal, deliberate-sounding off-key version of  _Let It Go_  from _Frozen_.

Loras gritted his teeth. This meant  _war_.

Once school let out, Loras stomped straight over to Renly’s, flinging his backpack down on the couch and heading up to his best friend’s bedroom. Renly was sat on his beanbag chair, Daniel Bedingfield blasting out of his iPod dock speakers, entirely engrossed in a game of  _Call of Duty_. Loras snatched his pillow off the bed and whacked Renly around the head with it, hard, taking a vicious pleasure in the yelp of surprise his actions produced from his best friend.

‘I was doing my SATs!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I was doing my SATs, and you were singing that stupid song from  _Despicable Me_  all the way through my reading test!’ Loras groaned, hitting him with the pillow again for good measure.

Renly burst out laughing.

‘Oh my God,’ he cackled, ‘that’s brilliant. That’s like… That’s like  _Stayin’ Alive_  during a funeral.’ He was laughing so hard tears were leaking out from the corners of his eyes. Loras glowered at him, thoroughly unimpressed. He dumped the pillow back on Renly’s bed and shoved him off the beanbag to sit down, daring him to push back with one raised eyebrow. Renly looked like he was thinking about it, wrestling this tiny eleven-year-old squirt for his seat, but he also knew that Loras was much stronger than he looked and had no compunctions about fighting dirty, so he let him be.

Renly finally wiped his eyes and smirked at Loras. ‘So wait, that was your voice humming  _Silence is Golden_?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I deserved that.’

‘Yeah, you did.’ Loras plugged in the spare controller and brought up the multiplayer option on screen. ‘Now c’mon, I’m going to kick your ass at  _CoD_.’

Renly grinned, grabbing the other controller and settling down to play.

* * *

By the time Loras was thirteen, he’d learned that a) Renly had the absolute worst taste in music known to man; and that b) he constantly played dirty when it came to making songs get stuck in Loras’ head at the most inopportune moments. Loras had been attending one of the many political dinners his father was constantly dragging them all to when Earth, Wind and Fire’s  _September_  started going around his head. He glared at his empty plate, cursing his best friend for an idiot, and shot his grandmother a tight, apologetic smile when she glowered at him.

Thankfully, the dinner didn’t last too long – or rather, he was allowed to go home with Margaery only an hour later because it was a school night – and so he deliberately spent the entire forty-five-minute-long taxi ride home sing-yelling Garlan’s favourite Iron Maiden song until Margaery pressed her hands over her ears and the taxi driver was almost crying, begging him to stop. They drove past Renly’s house on their way home, and Loras looked up at his best friend’s window to see Renly glaring and flipping him the bird. He smirked and responded in kind, making Renly laugh and shake his head, and satisfied himself with the knowledge that he’d won the latest round.

Until he was woken at four a.m. the next morning with  _Oh! What A Beautiful Morning_  from Oklahoma! still echoing in his ears. Loras cursed, as long and inventively as he could, under his breath before rolling over in bed with a groan and trying to block out Renly’s singing with a pillow over his ears. Of course, it did nothing – the voice was inside his head, after all – but it made him feel a little more in control of the situation, at least. He managed a few more hours of sleep before his alarm woke him for school and he clambered out of bed, groggy and rubbing the sleep from his eyes, feeling as though he’d not slept at all.

When he saw Renly waiting outside his house, he pulled his science book out of his head to whack Renly over the head with it in retaliation. His best friend just smirked, throwing his arm over Loras’ shoulders as they set off for school.

(It still amazed Loras that Renly, a Year Twelve student, would willingly walk to school with a lowly Year Eight, but he wasn’t about to complain. After all, Renly was one of those secondary school legends every year group seemed to know, always in trouble for having his shirt untucked or saying something tongue-in-cheek back to a teacher, spending every lunchtime he wasn’t in detention smoking behind the bike sheds.)

Thankfully, none of his lessons were disturbed by Renly before lunchtime, but at lunchtime he caught sight of Renly outside the cafeteria with his arm slung over the shoulders of a tall broad-shouldered boy with a stupid fluffy goatee that was the same horrible shade of orange as his hair. Renly was laughing at something he was saying, his body pressed close to the other boy’s, and Loras felt a weight settle in his stomach, eyes prickling until he thought absurdly that he might cry.

He didn’t understand why – it was Renly’s choice who he hung out with, after all, and Loras had never even seen this other boy before – but that didn’t change how much it hurt. He loathed the red-haired boy, loathed him more than he’d ever loathed anyone before, and even just seeing Renly’s hand on his shoulder made Loras want to break something. He jumped to his feet, clearing his tray away with an angry rattle of cutlery and plate and cup, and stormed out of the cafeteria to his form room, as far away from Renly and his new best friend as possible.

* * *

It only got worse from there.

Renly spent his eighteenth birthday with Ronnet –  _Ronnet_ , Loras thought, the stupidest name he’d ever heard – snuggled up on the couch together whilst they, Loras, and a few more of Renly’s friends from school all played videogames in their front room. Well, Bryce, Emmon, Robar and Parmen were all playing videogames. Renly and Ronnet spent more time smiling secretively at each other, kissing whenever they thought the others weren’t looking. Loras spent his time glowering at his lap, temper simmering. He’d never understand what Renly saw in Ronnet, who had the same horrible orange hair as Loras’ cousins Horas and Hobber, and the sort of braying voice that wouldn’t sound amiss on a farm animal.

He’d voiced all these thoughts to Margaery, who’d just looked at him with raised eyebrows and gone, ‘Mm-hmm?’ as though that should answer everything when it didn’t. She had seemed to be expecting Loras to realise something obvious, because after a few moments of outraged silence, she’d rolled her eyes and said ‘Oh, never mind, Loras,’ before shooing him out of her room.

After a little while, Renly made an excuse about needing to find something upstairs, and he and Ronnet disappeared together, giggling like little kids and chasing one another up the stairs, footfalls heavy on the steps. Royce waggled his eyebrows at Emmon and made a comment about Renly finally getting his main birthday present, and Bryce laughed, reaching over to the stereo to turn on the radio. He boosted the volume until Loras’ ears hurt – ‘Got to drown it out somehow!’ – and Loras had had enough. Scowling, he stomped out of the lounge to go to the bathroom, and he was halfway up the stairs when he heard it.

A low moan coming from Renly’s room, only just audible over the blasting radio from downstairs.

He froze on the step, eyes wide, staring at the closed bedroom door. A couple of moments passed before the noise came again – louder this time, and accompanied by a whimpered ‘ _Ronnet_ –!’

Loras’ blood boiled. He walked up the rest of the stairs as quietly as he could, careful not to disturb them in whatever they were doing (not that it wasn’t obvious), and closed the bathroom door behind him before looking up the  _Gummi Bear Song_  on his phone and singing along loudly, determined to broadcast it right through Renly’s head too.

He kept going, staring furiously at the ceiling, until tears were pricking his eyes and his head ached.

A door banging open outside startled him out of it, Renly’s voice angry outside the door. ‘Gods damn it, Loras – that was  _childish_ , very childish–’

Loras didn’t care. Renly opened the door, standing there with his arms crossed, his face red – from embarrassment or just pure anger, Loras didn’t know. There was a leaden weight still in his stomach as he took in the sight of Renly in front of him, tshirt rumpled, a large hickey on his neck.

‘I think it’s best you go home, Loras,’ he said, and Loras bit his lip.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No you’re not,’ Renly said tiredly, ‘not really.’ He gave a heavy sigh. ‘I think maybe we shouldn’t see each other for a while.’

‘W-what?’ Loras gasped, staring at him. He was sure he’d just imagined those words leaving Renly’s lips. Not see each other? He and Renly were all but inseparable. That was like asking Loras not to eat. Or not to breathe.

‘I said, I think we shouldn’t see each other for a while. It’s obvious me being with Ronnet upsets you, and I’m not going to choose between the pair of you.’

‘But that  _is_  choosing,’ Loras protested, the tears coming in for real now. ‘That’s choosing  _him_.’

‘Loras–’

‘Never mind,’ Loras choked out, shaking his head. Tears were dripping down his cheeks and he scrubbed fiercely at them, furious that he was  _crying_  in front of Renly. Crying! Over something – someone – as stupid as Ronnet! Unbelievable. He turned and ran back down the stairs, slamming the front door behind him, and didn’t stop running until he’d reached his own bedroom, where he threw himself down on the mattress and finally let himself cry properly.

Margaery came in to ask what was wrong, and he just shrugged helplessly at her. How could he even begin to explain it?

* * *

From then on, Renly walked with Ronnet to school. Loras knew that, because he got up at quarter to seven every morning so that he’d be on his way to school by half past, and there at eight o’clock when the gates were opened, early enough to see them arrive together. He’d then head straight for his form room every morning, for once grateful that it was on the other side of the school building to the sixth formers’ in the Science block. If he caught sight of Renly in the hallways – with or without Ronnet – he turned on his heel and walked in the opposite direction, even if that took him away from the lesson he was transferring to and made him late.

After his fourth demerit slip in a week, his mother sat him down at the dinner table and broached the topic of his behaviour with him. They’d all noticed at home, she said, that he’d been out of sorts, and these demerits from school couldn’t continue. Whatever was bugging him, he could come to her or his father, or even his brothers and sister if he didn’t feel able to tell his parents. They all wanted to make sure he was okay.

Loras sat there listlessly, nodding. His mother took one of his hands, her eyes concerned.

‘We’re worried about you, sweetheart.’

He shook her off with a dull smile. ‘I’m okay, Mum,’ he told her, getting up from the table. ‘I’ve got homework to do.’

She let him go, but he felt her eyes on his back as he left the kitchen and climbed the stairs to his room.

He plugged his iPod into his speakers as he opened his schoolbag, getting his English homework and his copy of  _Of Mice and Men_  out, cracking the book’s spine open to where they’d finished reading in class and starting his essay. His iPod was playing on shuffle, which was usually fine, but apparently today it had decided to make him feel even worse because it had started playing  _Skinny Love_  by Bon Iver.

 _I tell my love to wreck it all_ _  
Cut out all the ropes and let me fall_

Loras got up off the bed and hit the next button on his iPod, wanting anything but to listen to Bon Iver right now. He wasn’t even sure why that song was on there, because Bon Iver was far more Renly’s type of thing than his own.

Thinking about Renly made his heart clench. He missed his friend so desperately he couldn’t stand it; glimpsing him over the heads of all the other students in the corridors at school made butterflies flutter in his stomach until he felt sick and lightheaded. He refused to think about what that might mean, instead focusing on scrolling through more of his music until he found something innocuous enough that he could study without constantly thinking about Renly having chosen Ronnet over him on his birthday.

He’d settled on a Disney compilation; as sad as it was to be fourteen and still listening to Disney songs, there was something about the music from those movies that always made him feel better, and besides, Margaery loved joining in with the  _Lion King_  duets.

He finished writing his essay to the strains of  _The Circle of Life_  and  _Chim Chim-i-nee_ , singing along quietly under his breath. The iPod clicked over to the next song as he packed his things away.

* * *

Renly was working on his own homework, having said goodbye to Ronnet for the night, when a song crept into his head, Loras’ clear voice soft and sweet in his ears. It was one he recognised from the movie  _Hercules_ , that having been the first movie he and Loras watched together after having become friends. They’d built a blanket fort in Loras’ playroom, the movie playing on the wall TV, and Loras had snuggled up against Renly’s side with the duvet wrapped around them both and sung along to all of the songs even then.

 _Who d’you think you’re kidding?_  
_He’s the earth and heaven to ya_  
 _Try to keep it hidden_  
 _Honey, we can see right through ya_  
 _Girl, you can’t conceal it,_  
 _We know how you feel_  
 _And who you’re thinkin’ of_

Renly flicked through his copy of Joyce’s  _Dubliners_ , writing notes in the margins as he pored over the text. He still had a minimum of three hundred words to write for his coursework on this, but he couldn’t get the song out of his head, Loras’ voice clear as a bell in his thoughts.

He did miss Loras terribly. He’d regretted sending the poor thing home the moment he saw the tears glimmering in the corners of the younger boy’s eyes, but the damage had already been done. It hurt that whenever he saw Loras at school, the boy would spin around and head determinedly in the opposite direction, as though he could no longer stand even to look at Renly. Truth be told, it had been driving something of a wedge between himself and Ronnet; his boyfriend couldn’t understand why Renly was so concerned about the hurt feelings of a boy who didn’t even speak to Renly nowadays, and Renly didn’t know how to begin explaining that that was exactly the problem.

He and Loras had barely spent a single day apart before he met Ronnet. They’d grown up a bare two-minute walk from one another, had had joint birthday parties, spent Christmas at one another’s houses… And yet the change that came over Loras, that came over their entire relationship, the moment Ronnet appeared in the picture was enormous. He’d never known Loras to hate someone so entirely so quickly before, and he was starting to wonder if there wasn’t a reason for it.

 _Girl, you can’t deny it_  
_Who you are is how you’re feelin’_  
 _Baby, we’re not buying_  
 _Hon, we saw you hit the ceiling_  
 _Face it like a grownup_  
 _When you gonna own up that you got, got, got it bad?_

It struck him like a bolt from the blue.

Loras  _liked_  him.

Well, he meant, of course he knew that Loras liked him, they’d been best friends since they were children. What he meant was, Loras was in love with him.

The boy was  _jealous_.

* * *

Loras was playing  _Call of Duty_  on his Xbox when there was a knock at his bedroom door. He put the game on pause and got up, thinking it was probably his mother come to pester him into telling her what was wrong again (he was somewhat proud of himself for having held out for well over a month already), and he opened the door ready to tell her to go away only to be faced with Renly Baratheon.

His best friend looked a little awkward, standing there with his hair wet from the rain outside, hand still raised to knock again.

‘Hey.’

‘Hi,’ Loras said, staring at him.

‘Am I okay to come in?’

‘I – yeah, I suppose.’ He stood aside for Renly to come in, shutting the door behind him and resuming his position on the bed. His friend sat at the foot of the bed, cross-legged, picking at a hole in the knee of his jeans (deliberate; Renly always bought those stupid artfully-distressed jeans instead of getting normal ones and doing the distressing himself. Loras thought it was one of the many infuriatingly adorable things about his best friend, and he had to admit, the small slices of pale tan skin peeking through the holes always made him want to get his hands on more of Renly.)

‘I wanted to apologise,’ Loras said at the same time as Renly blurted out ‘I broke up with Ronnet–’

‘You what?’

‘I broke up with Ronnet,’ Renly repeated. ‘You were right, it wasn’t fair to choose him over you, and he was getting on my nerves. He was just… obnoxious, not to mention the fact that he didn’t actually let me kiss him anywhere other people might see.’

‘At your birthday party, though–’

‘Our friends don’t count,’ Renly said, a little bitter. ‘I mean people at school. People who don’t already know that both of us are as bent as a ten-bob note. I was sick of creeping around with him, feeling like his dirty little secret.’ He sounded so miserable that Loras’ heart ached, and he crept closer, putting his arm around Renly’s shoulders and resting his head on the older boy’s shoulder.

‘I knew he was a dickhead.’

Renly snorted. ‘There was an entirely different reason you hated him, Loras, and you know it.’

‘I don’t.’

‘Uh huh, and it just so happens that I’ve had  _I Won’t Say I’m In Love_  going around my head for the past hour for no reason, then, is that it?’

‘It was just playing on my iPod–’

‘Don’t, Loras,’ Renly said softly, his eyes sad and so blue on Loras’ as he pushed his long black hair behind one ear. ‘Don’t pretend with me.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Loras,’ Renly said, ‘do you know why we can hear each other in our heads?’

‘Everyone can. Garlan can with his girlfriend. My parents can.’

‘Have you noticed the common relationship between those two examples?’

‘I–’ Loras went pale. ‘It’s – it’s not like that with us. It’s  _not_.’

‘Are you sure?’ Renly asked, tucking a loose curl behind Loras’ ear. The younger boy flinched away, as though Renly had struck him, and Renly’s stomach flipped. Of all the reactions he’d been expecting, the naked horror in Loras’ face and the adamant denials of his (suspected) feelings for Renly wasn’t one of them. What if he’d completely misjudged the situation and Loras was disgusted by the thought that Renly might have romantic feelings for him as well as friendly ones? What if he’d just royally fucked up their friendship whilst trying to salvage it?

The room was spinning, and he felt nauseous. God, what had he  _done_?

‘It can’t be,’ Loras said. ‘You never – you never said anything.’

Renly felt the room’s spinning skid to a halt, his heart jumping up into his mouth. Loras was staring at him, his eyes wide, confusion in the amber depths.

‘I didn’t know,’ he said honestly. ‘It was the  _Hercules_  song that clued me in.’

‘I didn’t either, for a while,’ Loras confessed, ‘and then Margaery made me tell her what was wrong. She looked at me like I was an idiot for ten minutes and then whacked me with a pillow, and it just hit me.’

‘What, the pillow?’ Renly grinned, and Loras rolled his eyes.

‘You know what I meant.’

‘Yeah,’ Renly said softly, his eyes shining, and closed the distance between them to kiss him. Loras melted the moment Renly’s lips touched his, his best friend lowering him gently to the bed as he deepened the kiss, and Loras reached up to twine a hand in Renly’s hair. He coaxed out the wet tangles, tugging lightly, and Renly groaned into his mouth, his hips twitching astride Loras. Loras decided to file that information away for later and grinned, pulling away to see Renly smiling back.

‘What?’

Loras pulled again, smirking as Renly’s eyelids fluttered for a second before he looked back at Loras, eyes narrowing as a wicked smile broke out on his lips.

‘Oh, it’s on.’

‘Can’t wait,’ Loras smirked, and pulled Renly down for another kiss.


End file.
